New Relic vs Grafana: One Hosted Platform or a Stack You Assemble
Prices and facts checked on vendor pages on Nov 8, 2026.
New Relic is a hosted observability platform that bills for data ingest and for the engineers who log in. Grafana started as a dashboarding tool and now spans an open source stack (Loki, Mimir, Tempo) plus a paid cloud that meters each signal on its own. The core choice is one price per GB with seats on top, or a menu of meters you can also run yourself.
The Short Answer
Pick New Relic if you want APM, logs, browser and infrastructure behind one login, and your team is small enough that per-user fees stay low. Pick Grafana if you already run Prometheus-style metrics, want the option to self-host, or would rather pay per signal than per GB with seats on top.
New Relic vs Grafana at a Glance
How New Relic Charges
These are list prices checked Nov 8, 2026. You pay for two things: data and users. Data is 100 GB free each month and then $0.40/GB on the Original option, or $0.60/GB on Data Plus. Users come in three types. Basic users are free and can use dashboards, queries and alerts. Core users cost $49 each and add logs and error tracking. Full platform users cost $10 for the first and $99 for each additional on Standard, capped at five, or $349 each on Pro with an annual commitment ($418.80 pay-as-you-go).
Example, using only those rates: a team of five engineers on Standard who send 500 GB a month pays for 400 billable GB at $0.40, which is $160, plus $10 + 4 x $99 = $406 for users. That is $566 a month at list. Growing to ten full users means moving to Pro, where ten at $349 is $3,490 before data. New Relic also lists full consumption pricing with no user licenses on Pro and Enterprise.
How Grafana Charges
Grafana Cloud Pro costs $19 a month plus usage, and each signal has its own rate. Metrics start at $6.50 per 1,000 active series above the first 10,000. Logs, traces and profiles each start at $0.05/GB to process, $0.40/GB to write and $0.10/GB to retain, with the first 50 GB included. Kubernetes monitoring starts at $0.01 per host hour, Application Observability at $0.025 per host hour ($18 per host), and Frontend Observability at $0.75 per 1,000 sessions. Grafana Assistant costs $20 per active AI user, which includes 40M tokens.
Using the same 500 GB of logs: 450 billable GB at $0.05 + $0.40 is $202.50, plus the $19 platform fee, before retention and query charges. Grafana's own estimator applies volume discounts, so use it for real numbers. People are a separate meter: Pro includes 3 active users a month, then starts at $8 per active user, or $55 per user with Enterprise plugins, so ten engineers who sign in add 7 x $8 = $56.
Where the Two Really Differ
Who pays for people. New Relic's price rises with the number of engineers who need full access, while basic users stay free. Grafana bills every active user beyond the first 3, starting at $8, and Assistant bills per active AI user on top. If many people only read dashboards, New Relic's free basic users are the cheaper way to give them access.
Ownership of the stack. Loki indexes only labels and stores log chunks in object storage such as S3 or GCS, which Grafana's docs say keeps operation simple and cost low. If you need data to stay in your own account, you can run the pieces yourself or ask about Bring Your Own Cloud on Enterprise. With New Relic you send data to its hosted platform.
Querying. NRQL is one SQL-like language across New Relic data types, and it powers the built-in charts too. Grafana's log store, Loki, uses LogQL, which is inspired by PromQL, so a team that already knows Prometheus has a head start. A team that knows SQL will feel at home in NRQL.
Retention. New Relic's 30-day default for logs matches Grafana Pro. Grafana keeps metrics for 13 months on Pro, while New Relic APM data is held 8 days unless you buy Data Plus.
When to Pick New Relic
- You want APM, browser, infrastructure and logs in one product without wiring backends together.
- Your engineering team is under about ten people, so user fees stay modest.
- You prefer one per-GB rate over four separate meters.
- Nobody on your team wants to operate storage.
When to Pick Grafana
- You already collect Prometheus metrics or run OpenTelemetry Collectors and want dashboards on top.
- Your headcount is modest, so Grafana's per-active-user fee stays small while you pay mainly for data.
- You want the option to self-host Loki, Mimir or Tempo later without changing tools.
- Your telemetry is metric-heavy and you want Adaptive Metrics to prune unused series.
Where Sazabi Fits
Sazabi is AI-native observability and security that can run beside either tool. If your logs pass through an OpenTelemetry Collector, you can add Sazabi as an additional OTLP/HTTP exporter and keep your current dashboards. Its agent investigates when you mention it in Slack, and it opens issues you can hand to a coding agent. See Sazabi vs New Relic, Sazabi vs Grafana, the Grafana Alloy integration, and Sazabi pricing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is New Relic or Grafana cheaper?
It depends on team size and signal mix. New Relic charges $0.40 per GB of data beyond 100 GB plus per-user fees, so cost grows with the number of engineers who need full access. Grafana Cloud charges per signal (series, GB, host hours, sessions) and per active user beyond the first 3, with a $19 monthly platform fee on Pro. New Relic tends to favor teams where most people only need free basic access, and Grafana tends to favor teams with modest headcount and metric-heavy telemetry.
Can I self-host New Relic the way I can self-host Grafana?
The New Relic pages we reviewed describe a hosted service only. Grafana, Loki, Mimir and Tempo are open source projects you can run yourself, and Grafana Cloud Enterprise lists a Bring Your Own Cloud option.
Which has the bigger free tier?
New Relic gives 100 GB of data ingest per month, one full platform user and unlimited basic users. Grafana Cloud Free gives 10,000 active metric series, 50 GB each of logs, traces and profiles, and 14 days of retention. New Relic stops ingesting once you pass 100 GB until the next month, unless you upgrade.
Do both support OpenTelemetry?
Yes. New Relic documents an OTLP endpoint and its own Collector distribution (NRDOT). Grafana accepts OTLP in Grafana Cloud and in self-managed Loki, Mimir and Tempo, and offers Alloy as a processing option next to the upstream Collector.
Sources
- Free tier, $0.40/GB and $0.60/GB data ingest beyond 100 GB, basic, core and full platform user prices, editions, Advanced Compute (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Default retention in days for APM, logs and infrastructure data under the Original and Data Plus options (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- NRQL is a SQL-like language that also powers New Relic charts, dashboards and alerts (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- OpenTelemetry data and the New Relic OTLP endpoint (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Autopilot agents that investigate incidents using telemetry, runbooks, Jira and GitHub (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- New Relic Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector (NRDOT) and OTel convergence in APM (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- SRE Agent correlates logs, metrics, traces and changes; public preview (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Free, Pro and Enterprise plans, $19 platform fee, per-signal rates for metrics, logs, traces and Assistant, active user price, retention by plan, Bring Your Own Cloud on Enterprise (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Open source Grafana, Loki, Mimir, Tempo and Pyroscope projects (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Loki indexes only label metadata and stores compressed chunks in object stores such as S3 or GCS (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- OTLP ingest into Grafana Cloud or self-managed Loki, Mimir and Tempo; data can be processed with Grafana Alloy or the OpenTelemetry Collector (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Grafana Assistant for dashboards, analytics and troubleshooting in Grafana Cloud (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Sazabi plan prices, included usage and overage rates (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Sazabi as an additional OTLP/HTTP exporter in an OpenTelemetry Collector (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Mention the Sazabi agent in Slack to investigate; issue notification cards (accessed Nov 8, 2026)